


Soon We'll Be Found

by gansey_is_our_king



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: First Date, Fluff, M/M, adam loves his friends and ronan, like other characters are mentioned but that's it, my love for adam parrish is out of control in this honestly, ronan loves cars and adam, this is completely pynch-centric
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-24
Updated: 2017-12-24
Packaged: 2019-02-19 17:51:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,248
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13128774
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gansey_is_our_king/pseuds/gansey_is_our_king
Summary: Ronan and Adam go on a date that involves fluff and fast cars ... because what else can you expect?





	Soon We'll Be Found

**Author's Note:**

> Hello! This is my fic for the Pynch Presents 2017 for @cosmiccluck! Hope you like it :)  
> Comments and kudos give me life, so if you have a second, please let me know what you think! 
> 
> Title is from the song "Soon We'll Be Found" by Sia.

Being Adam Parrish was a complicated thing.

He had school. Long hours spent taking meticulous notes in class, dragging his tired body through extra curricular activities that looked good on a college application, studying until three in the morning to maintain his nearly perfect grade average.

He had work. Even longer hours spent at three different, but equally exhausting jobs that barely managed to cover his Aglionby tuition, and rent on the tiny apartment above the church, with just enough left over at the end of the month for his slowly growing college fund.

He had parents. Two people that no longer felt like a family to him, that he never talked to if he could help it, and tried not to waste time thinking about the rest of the time, because Adam Parrish was not in the habit of feeling sorry for himself.

And he had his friends. His court. Gansey and Blue, and sometimes even Henry Cheng, the latter somehow managing to fit himself seamlessly into their midst despite it making no logical sense.

He had Opal, a dream thing in the waking world.

He had Ronan, his dreamer, his something more.

Adam was thinking about that as he wiped the engine grease off his hands with a rag, and rolled down his work coveralls to tie at his waist, and snatched his backpack from a cubby in the break room.

Boyd had already gone home for the night, leaving him with a spare set of keys.

They jangled a tuneless song while Adam switched out the lights and locked up the garage.

Ronan was waiting outside for him—of course he was.

The BMW was parked in such a way that suggested to Adam it had slid to a stop in the gravel lot, and the headlamps cut two narrow paths through the Henrietta dark. Adam could already hear the stereo blasting from where he was standing, the bass shaking in his heart, matching it beat for beat as he walked over to the car.

He knocked on the driver side window.

Ronan had the interior lights on, and he was rummaging around for something in the glove compartment, the vicious hooks of his tattoo just poking out above his jacket. Adam was pleased to see that the back seat was devoid of any dream creations.

He tapped on the glass again, and kept tapping until Ronan noticed him.

The other boy turned around to display his very best sneer, which was really more like a smirk, which was really more like a smile. Then he slammed the glove compartment shut, and rolled down the driver window.

“Parrish. What the hell do you want?”

“Obviously not the pleasure of your company,” Adam quipped. Bantering with Ronan was easier than flirting with him, even though most of the time they felt like the same thing.

Even though Adam knew that he was _allowed_ to flirt now.  

He watched Ronan prop his elbow lazily on the window ledge. His leather jacket was pulled tight across his shoulders in a very attractive way, and as Adam stared, he had to remind himself that he was allowed to do that too.

It sent an anxious thrill up his spine.

He reached inside the window, and found icy skin. Ronan twitched at his touch, and then he twisted their fingers together very carefully, warm against cold, like Adam was something he might break by accident.

Adam did not feel particularly breakable at the moment.

He felt electric instead.

He let Ronan lean out the window to kiss him.

They had been doing this for almost two months, and Adam knew he should be getting used to it by now, but somehow every time that Ronan pressed their lips together he was left feeling all tingly and light. He was still standing out in that storm, the rain soaking through his clothes, his head tipped back to catch the taste of it in his mouth.

Adam fisted a hand in the black tank top that Ronan was wearing.

Ronan reached up and caught dusty hair between his fingers.

It was so lovely, and strange, and real that Adam ached.

He tried to chase after Ronan when the kiss ended, but the window ledge stopped him from leaning too far inside the car, and then the wing mirror caught Adam in the ribs. Maybe it was all for the best. Ronan looked a little like he was going to pass out anyway.

“Jesus fuck,” he muttered, and it sounded like a prayer.

Adam rubbed absently at his side.

Closed his eyes for a fraction of a second.

He kept forgetting how to breath when he was around Ronan, which was ironic, because being with him felt like breaking above the surface of an ocean Adam had been drowning in his entire life.

“Are we actually going somewhere?” he said after a moment. “Or are you just going to sit in the car all night while I freeze my ass off outside?”

Ronan tugged his hand away.

Adam was a little disappointed, and then less disappointed when the lock on the passenger door popped up. He went around the hood to get in the BMW. Ronan fiddled with the volume dial on the stereo as Adam tucked his backpack between his knees, the normally obnoxious music fading into the background along with the hungry growl of the engine.

“Opal?” Adam asked.

She tended to follow her dreamer everywhere that was not The Barns.

Ronan tested the gas pedal. The engine roared. “Left her with Gansey,” he said.

Adam looked at him curiously, but Ronan had fixed his eyes out the window.

The sky was black through the glass.

“You wanna change out of those things?” Ronan added, nodding at the faded blue coveralls that Adam was still wearing tied around his waist.

“Do you want me to change?” Adam said.

He thought this might be a test.

Ronan squeezed the gearstick in his left hand, his knuckles turning white.

“I was just thinking… we could go somewhere.”

“Just us?” Adam clarified. And then, more slowly, “Like a date?”

“No. I mean. Yeah. If you want.” Ronan was still staring carefully out the front windshield, his eyelashes dark against porcelain skin. The tips of his ears were decidedly pink, and so was the back of his neck. Adam wondered how far the flush would spread, imagined the heat of it underneath the black ink that made up his intricate tattoo.

His breath caught in his throat.

“Might be fun,” he said, aiming for casual and missing by about a mile.

Ronan was biting the inside of his cheek, trying to hide his smile.

He slammed the BMW into gear.  

 

~

 

“What kind of date is this?” Adam said fifteen minutes later. He stood glaring at his own tired reflection in the mirror above the bathroom sink while Ronan lounged apathetically on his shitty mattress.

Adam Parrish did not like his reflection.

He thought that his eyes were set just a bit too far apart in his face, and that his cheeks were always just a bit too red, his skin chapped and blotchy in the December chill. He had a wide mouth that never tipped up equally in both corners. His dusty hair stuck out around his ears the same way that tumbleweeds stuck out from the fenders of parked cars in the trailer park.

But in reality, it was not the hick look that bothered him the most.

It was all the pieces of Robert Parrish that Adam had unwittingly inherited.

His pale eyes.

His cruel jawline.

The untamed cowlick above his right ear.

The similarities were small, and for the most part they probably went unnoticed by his friends and acquaintances, but to Adam each one was a betrayal. They were the string that kept him tied to a past he was trying to leave behind.

“The fuck do you mean, what kind of date is this?” Ronan snapped from where he was still sprawled across mattress, not even bothering to lift his head. He kept reaching up to run both hands over his hair. It was longer than Adam had ever seen it, and messy. The ends were actually starting to curl just a little.

Adam wanted to touch it.

He wanted Ronan to want him to touch it.

He shuffled over to lean in the bathroom doorway. “I mean, is this a shirt and tie kind of date, or can I just put on anything? You still haven’t told me where we’re going, or what we’re even going to do when we get there.”

Ronan laughed loud and obnoxious.

Adam scowled at him. “What?”

“Come on, Parrish. Do I look like a fucking shirt and tie guy to you?”

“Maybe,” Adam said petulantly.

“Throw on a shirt so we can get the hell out of here,” Ronan replied snarkily.

He levered himself up on his elbows, which made the rusty mattress springs creak underneath him. Adam threw on a shirt. Then he pulled on his jacket and stuffed his feet into sneakers while Ronan yanked open the apartment door.

They were back in the BMW when Ronan said, very quietly, “You look good.”

Adam felt his heart skip a few beats. He smiled as Ronan cranked up the volume on stereo, and watched his ears turning pink again.

 

~

 

They got burgers at a greasy fast food joint on the other side of Henrietta. The neon sign outside flickered suspiciously as Ronan shoved open the door, and the Formica tables were scrawled all over with doodles from previous visitors. It was not a very Aglionby place, but it was a very Ronan place.

Adam had been there before, when he was a kid.

It felt different now.

He squeezed in next to Ronan at the corner booth, sitting close enough that their hips were touching, their knees and ankles knocking together underneath the table. That may or may not have been on purpose.

Ronan ordered extra fries, and let Adam eat them off his plate.

He practically shoved his soda at Adam, snarling at him to finish it off.

They split the bill, not quite in half.

“Wanna drive around?” Ronan finally asked.

He grabbed Adam before a protest could form, gripping his hand. His fingers were warm now, the skin rough with blisters from repairing a fence at The Barns last week, and he smelled of boxwood and heather. There was a bit of Chainsaw on his leather jacket too, when Adam leaned closer, but he kind of liked it.

Ronan dragged him back out to the car. Turned the key with a grin on his face that matched his anxious hands squeezing around the steering wheel.

They screamed out of the lot, and Adam was smiling again.

 

~

 

Ronan drove for what seemed like hours, and also like minutes. The music blared around them, and the engine snarled underneath the hood, and the fat tires hummed over the slick black tarmac.

Adam was alive.

He leaned his forehead against the window, and felt the vibration of the car spread through him until he was vibrating with it, his hands fisted in his lap and his feet braced flat on the floor, his eyes on the rough grass that flashed past on the side of the road.

“What are you thinking about?” Ronan said. He was almost shouting to be heard over the music, and his expression was complicated when Adam turned to look at him. His sharp profile cut an imposing shape in the shadowed car.

“I like your hair,” Adam admitted.

He reached over, and brushed his thumb through the shorter bristles at his neck.

Ronan shivered. Then he jerked the wheel, and pulled the car over.

“What?” Adam said, breathless, already knowing the answer.

Ronan kissed him.

The engine was still running, and the music was still on, blasting in the car.

Adam never wanted to let go. He pulled Ronan closer, almost out of the driver seat, and when they finally stopped kissing to breath he laughed. His face was burning with excitement, with embarrassment at his own clumsy eagerness. He touched Ronan’s face very softly, tracing hot fingertips down his cheek, underneath his chin, across the sharp jut of his collarbone, pushing his shirt out of the way.

“I had a really good time tonight,” he said.

“Yeah,” Ronan muttered.

Adam waited for him to make a joke, but Ronan looked serious, almost reverent.

He kissed Adam again, very slowly, very softly. Adam put a hand in his hair.

“I want this to last,” he whispered, not sure quite what he meant.

Not sure if he was referring to this exact moment. Ronan lying half on top of him, the seatbelt nearly cutting him in half, their chapped lips still almost touching in the ghost of a kiss.

If it was whatever he had right now with Ronan. Their relationship, which was so complicated and messy and wonderful, and made him feel utterly complete.

If it was this life. The seemingly endless hours of school and the religious studying for college, all his late nights spent working, the act of trying to prove that even though he had come from nothing, Adam Parrish would still make something of himself one day.

That he was already making something of himself.

Ronan gently twisted their fingers together.

Adam felt his warm lips on the palm of his hand.

 

 

\- fin

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading everyone xoxo  
> find me on tumblr @alliwannadoiswrite


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